“Oh, Geismar. Right. You’re looking for a friend. I’m sorry, I forgot all about it.” He picked up a pen, ready to work.
“Don’t forget to sign him out,” the driver said to Bernie, drifting back up the stairs.
“What was the name?” ‹›“Brandt. But I need something else.” Bernie looked up, his pen still poised to write. Jake pulled out a chair.
“A soldier was killed in Potsdam yesterday-well, killed the day before. He washed up on the conference grounds yesterday. Hear about it?”
Bernie shook his head, waiting. ‹›“No, I guess not,” Jake said, “not down here. Anyway, I was there, so I got interested. He had some money on him, a lot, five thousand, maybe closer to ten. I thought that was interesting too, but apparently I’m the only one. MG just gave me the brush this morning-polite, but a brush. This one came with a lecture. Happens all the time. Black market’s a nickel-and-dime game, no big players. Nobody gets excited when a Russian shoots one of our men, just when they do anything else. So go away, please. Now I’m even more interested. Then I hear the body’s already been shipped back to Frankfurt. That’s a little too efficient, especially for MG. Following me so far?“
“Who was the brush?”
“Muller,” Jake said.
Bernie frowned. “Fred Muller? He’s a good man. Old army.”
“I know. So they say keep a lid on it and he keeps a lid on it. Look, I don’t blame him. He’s a time-server and he doesn’t want any trouble. He probably thinks I’m a pain in the ass.”
“Probably.”
“But why keep a lid on it? He promises me an exclusive and gives me a casualty report. But not all of it. There’s a sheet missing.” Jake paused. “The kind of thing the DA’s office used to pull.”
Bernie smiled. “So why come to me?”
“Because you were a DA. I’ve never met one yet who stopped being a DA. Something’s funny here. You can feel it in your gut.”
Bernie looked over at him. “I don’t feel anything yet.”
“No? Try this. Muller wants me to think it’s a GI making a few bucks on the side. Okay, not nice, but nothing special, either. But he wasn’t just a GI. PSD, that’s Public Safety Division, isn’t it?”
“That’s what it says on the charts,” Bernie said slowly.
“Well, that’s what it says on the casualty report too. PSD. He was one of you. Ever met a police department that couldn’t be bothered when a cop got shot? That’s one organization takes care of its own.”
Bernie looked at him again, then reached over for his coffee cup. “We’re not exactly a police department, you know,” he said carefully. “It’s not the same.”
“But you run the MPs, you run the local police, you’re responsible for law and order. Such as it is.”
“I don’t run anything. You’re asking the wrong guy. I’m Special Branch. I just—”
“Chase rats, I know. But you’re still in the department. You must know people. Anyway, you’re the only one I know. So.”
Bernie took another sip of coffee. “Berlin PSD?” ‹›“No, he flew in from Frankfurt. Another interesting point, by the way.“
“Then no wonder Fred sent him back. Put it in somebody else’s in-box. It’s the MG way.” He paused. “Look, I don’t have time for this, whatever it is. You want somebody over in CID. Criminal Investigation.” Jake shook his head. “CID’s army, not Military Government. Knife fights. This is being handled by Public Safety.” He took the sheets out of his pocket. “Here, see for yourself.”
Bernie put his hand up in a stop sign. “No, I mean it. I don’t have the time.”
“Somebody else’s in-box,” Jake said.
Bernie put down the cup and sighed. “What are you looking for, anyway?”
“Why nobody wants to know. The way the story’s supposed to go is the Russians loot, we just liberate a few souvenirs. I’ve told it that way myself. And Public Safety? The last place you’d expect to find a bad apple. Wrong barrel. But my guess is that he had something going, not just a couple of cartons of cigarettes, and I’ll bet it’s Muller’s guess too. The difference is, he doesn’t want to know and this time I do. So would a DA. Man’s dead.”
Bernie ran his hand through the tight waves of his hair and stood up, as if the chair had been confining him. He moved a folder onto a pile, then walked over to another, pretending to be busy. “I’m not a DA here,” he said finally. “I’m MG too. Maybe Fred’s right, you know. The guy closed his own case. Maybe we’re all better off.”
“Except for one thing. What if he wasn’t acting solo? A man comes to Berlin to make a deal and ends up dead. So who was he coming to see?”
“A Russian, you said.” He moved another pile.
“Must have been. But who set it up? He’s operating all by himself? There have to be some other apples in that barrel. Chances are, he had friends. It’s a friendly kind of business.”
“Friends in Public Safety?” Bernie said, looking up.
“Somewhere. That’s the way it used to work in Chicago.”
“That’s Chicago,” Bernie said, waving his hand. ‹›“And Berlin. It’s always the same, more or less. Here’s a big city with no police and a lot of money floating around. Put out that kind of cheese and the usual mice come out. And pretty soon somebody has to organize it, to make sure he gets a little more. It’s always the same. The only question is whether Patrick Tully was one of the mice or one of the rats who took a little more.“
“Who?”
“Patrick Tully. The victim.” Jake handed over the sheet to Bernie. “Twenty-three. Afraid of flying. So why come to Berlin? Who was he coming to see?”
Bernie stared at the paper, then at Jake.
“That’s the report,” Jake said. “Half of it, anyway. Maybe the other half can tell me.”
“I can tell you,” Bernie said evenly, his body finally still. “He was coming to see me.”
“What?” A word to fill time, too surprised to say anything else. For a second neither of them spoke. Bernie looked again at the sheet.
“Yesterday,” he said quietly, thinking aloud. “That’s why I canceled you. He never showed. I told Mike to keep an eye out. That’s probably who he thought you were. Why he brought you here-we’re off-limits to press.”
“Tully was coming to see you?” Jake said, still taking it in. “Want to tell me why? ”
“I have no idea.” He glanced up. “That isn’t a brush. I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
Bernie shrugged. “People come through from Frankfurt all the time. Somebody from PSD requests a meeting, what am I supposed to say? No? Half the time they’re just looking for an excuse to come to Berlin. Everybody wants to see it, but you’re supposed to have a reason for being here. So they liaise and fart around in meetings nobody has time for and then go home.”
“With five thousand dollars.”
“He didn’t get it from me, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said irritably. “He didn’t show, or do you want Mike to verify that?”
“Keep your shirt on. Fm just trying to figure this out. You didn’t know him?”
“Not from Adam. PSD out of Frankfurt, that’s all. Never worked with him on a case. I don’t even know if he was Special Branch. I suppose I could find out.” A crack in the door. Still a DA after all.
“But what did you think he wanted? Just like that, out of the blue.”
Bernie sat down, ruffling his hair again. “A face meeting with Frankfurt? Out of the blue? It could have been anything. Grief, usually. The last time it was Legal complaining about my methods,” he said, giving the word an edge. “They like to do that personally, bring you in line. Frankfurt thinks I’m a loose cannon. Not that I give a shit.”
“Why a loose cannon?”
Bernie smiled slightly. “I’ve been known to break a regulation. Once or twice.”
“So break another one,” Jake said, looking at him.
“Because you have a gut feeling? I don’t know you from Adam either.”
“No. But somebody comes to see you, makes a stop along the way, and gets shot. Now two of us are interested.”
